If you thought Alphabet is the company formerly known as Google, you would be wrong. Alphabet is a conglomerate created to hold Google and was created first as a subsidiary of Google, to which a separate dummy subsidiary was created with which Google merged to convert Google stock into Alphabet stock.
Alphabet is not Google. Alphabet never was Google. Alphabet owns Google, and the performance of Google is tracked under Alphabet's own stock (which still uses GOOG, but is a concretely different stock). There is a difference, and these are people to whom it matters.
And what "everyone knows" is not relevant to WSJ's audience. The company is Alphabet. It is not Google. I don't think this can be stated in simpler terms.
The WSJ's news section can be considered jargon of its own. I'm sure you would not react in the same way if a "business guy" criticized a piece of technical reporting for things you expected to be in it.
> The company is Alphabet. It is not Google. I don't think this can be stated in simpler terms.
Those terms are simple, but not accurate. The company this story is about is Google. Alphabet is the public traded corporation in whom WSJ readers may wish to invest (or disinvest) that owns the company the story is about. (Google and Alphabet are both companies, but Alphabet isn't taking any action that is being reported in this story.)
Sure, you are that most important kind of correct: technically so. And so I'll amend it: "the company that matters to the WSJ's audience is Alphabet because they're where the money is."
The mixture of pedantry and willful vagueness in this thread is weird.
Alphabet is not Google. Alphabet never was Google. Alphabet owns Google, and the performance of Google is tracked under Alphabet's own stock (which still uses GOOG, but is a concretely different stock). There is a difference, and these are people to whom it matters.